In Jackson Heights

“About the very stuff of life. The film meticulously, intellectually, allusively, yet ardently shows a crucial aspect of American experience, a working-out on film of the American democratic idea.”—Richard Brody, New Yorker

When Frederick Wiseman visited the Wexner Center in April 2006, he had already developed the most singular career in American documentary. In the following decade he has only deepened and expanded his incisive, novelistic portraits of American cultural and social institutions. 

In his latest award-winning film, Wiseman examines one of New York City’s most racially, ethnically, and culturally diverse neighborhoods. As the community deals with the inevitable onslaught of economic “development,” Wiseman nimbly moves from documenting an LGBT support meeting to a gathering of Holocaust survivors to a hilarious training class for aspiring taxi drivers. This is a lively, vast, and dynamic mosaic of New York—and America—as it looks and sounds in 2015. (190 mins., DCP)